Bektashism and folk religion explained

Folk religious beliefs and practices exist in Bektashism.^{[1] [2] [3]} While Bektashism was originally founded as an Islamic Sufi order,^{[4] [5]} it became widespread in the Ottoman Empire, throughout Anatolia as well as in the Balkans, where it acquired beliefs and practices from many folk religions, mainly of the Albanians and northern Greeks, and also from Anatolian and Balkan Eastern Orthodox Christians and Gnostics, and therefore Bektashism became a syncretic and perennialist Sufi order.^[6] The other Balkan and Anatolian religious communities, such as Christians also had this habit of acquiring folk religious beliefs and practices.^[7]

References

1. Evans, A. 1901. Mycenean Tree and Pillar Cult and its Mediterranean Relations. The Journal of Hellenic Studies. 21. pp99-204.
2. Crowfoot J.W. 1900. Survivals among the Kappadokian Kizilbash (Bektash). The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 30. pp305-20.
3. Antonaccio . Carla M . Contesting the past: hero cult, tomb cult, and epic in early Greece . American Journal of Archaeology . 1994 . 390.
4. DOJA. ALBERT. 2006. A Political History of Bektashism from Ottoman Anatolia to Contemporary Turkey. Journal of Church and State. 48. 2. 423–450. 10.1093/jcs/48.2.423. 23922338. 0021-969X.
5. J. K. Birge (1937), The Bektashi Order of Dervishes, London.
6. Nicolle, David; pg 29
7. Book: Filipova . Snežana . Notes on the continuous multi-confessional use of shrines, cult places, Christian relics and springs of holy water in the Republic of Macedonia..

Further reading

• Birge, John Kingsley (1937). The Bektashi order of dervishes, London and Hartford.
• Brown, John (1927), The Darvishes of Oriental Spiritualism.
• Küçük, Hülya (2002) The Roles of the Bektashis in Turkey’s National Struggle. Leiden: Brill.
• Mélikoff, Irène (1998). Hadji Bektach: Un mythe et ses avatars. Genèse et évolution du soufisme populaire en Turquie. Leiden: Islamic History and Civilization, Studies and Texts, volume 20, .
• Yaman, Ali (undated). "Kizilbash Alevi Dedes." (Based on his MA thesis for Istanbul University.)
• Vorhoff, Karin. (1998), “Academic and Journalistic Publications on the Alevi and Bektashi of Turkey.” Swedish Research Institute.